Early Life &Â Inner Knowing
From an early age, I sensed tension between the world around me and what I knew inwardly to be true. I questioned systems, rules, and expectations that felt misaligned with that inner knowing.
Like many, I eventually learned how to move through the world by following the paths laid out before me. I earned a terminal degree, practiced law for a decade, married, and built financial stability. From the outside, my life appeared complete. Inside, I was not well.
This was not my path. Not my destiny. Not my charism.
The moment that made this undeniable arrived unexpectedly. One of my Labrador Retrievers experienced multiple seizures in the middle of the night. In the midst of fear and urgency, something in me opened. I understood, with clarity I could not ignore, that the stress I was carrying was harming not only me but those I loved most.
Something had to change.Â
The Journey & Wisdom
I left corporate law and began listening more closely to the quiet voice within. I wandered, traveled, and spent long stretches of time in solitude, prayer, study, and embodied practice. I lived simply and paid attention. I learned to trust what emerged when I stopped forcing answers and began listening with my whole body.
Along the way, I began remembering what had always been present. The ways I sensed and moved with energy as a child. The natural attunement I felt with animals. The capacity to listen beyond words and remain attentive to what could not be easily named.
I studied across contemplative traditions, mysticism, philosophy, Indigenous wisdom, and ancient healing practices, not to accumulate techniques, but to deepen my ability to listen, to stay present, and to accompany others with care.
I was not searching for answers. I was searching for truth.
Meeting Grief
Grief lives where illusions fall away and we meet life as it is. It enters our lives not only through death, but through change, transition, and loss of what once felt certain.
We meet grief when identities dissolve, when the ground shifts beneath us, when the world no longer resembles what it once was. To walk inward is to meet grief. To meet grief is to meet life in all its tenderness and intensity.
Grief asks for presence. It asks for honesty. It asks for time.
My Work
Since leaving corporate law in 2016, I have devoted myself to this inward work, both my own and that of those I walk alongside. What began as a personal unraveling became a lifelong devotion to listening deeply, tending the soul, and honoring the wisdom that emerges when we slow down enough to hear what is asking for our attention.
My work is shaped by contemplative practice, grief tending, and lived engagement with the world as it is. I do not approach grief as something to be fixed or overcome. I understand it as a sacred passage that asks for accompaniment, patience, and care.
Today, my work centers on grief-informed soul direction and compassionate companionship. I walk with individuals and communities through loss, change, and profound transition. I also host intimate retreats that offer spacious, embodied time for rest, discernment, and communal care. I hold space for sorrow, remembrance, integration, and the emergence of new ways of being.
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More about my journey can be found in my first book, Lawyers, Lies and Labradors: One Woman's Search for Truth.
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Professional Background
Keveney Evanne Avila, JD, is a grief-informed soul director and spiritual companion and the founder of Her Circle, a monthly online gathering rooted in Divine Feminine presence and communal witnessing. Her work is grounded in contemplative practice, ethical discernment, and accompaniment through transition and loss. She accompanies individuals and communities through seasons of profound change, when familiar structures fall away and deeper questions emerge. She has clients across the United States and leads retreats throughout the country.
She earned her Juris Doctor in 2007 and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Peace and Conflict Studies. In college, Keveney studied abroad in the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, and Belgium. During law school, she returned to England for a judicial clerkship at Harrow Crown Court and for study at New College, University of Oxford; she also spent time studying at the Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal. She interned at the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies (DIILS) at Naval Station Newport in Newport, Rhode Island, where she conducted extensive research and developed training programs on war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Keveney practiced employment law and family-based immigration law for a decade before stepping away in December 2016. She remains a licensed attorney and member of the State Bar of Texas and continues occasional immigration pro bono work with survivors of human trafficking and unaccompanied minors.
Her legal and policy work included drafting and lobbying for anti-trafficking legislation at the state and federal levels and collaborating with researchers and public officials to advance child welfare and public health initiatives. She holds advanced and family mediation certifications and has developed alternative dispute resolution programs in academic and community settings. She remains engaged in local civic and policy efforts focused on justice, equity, and immigration issues.
Since leaving the practice of law in 2016, Keveney’s work has centered on contemplative practice, grief tending, soul direction, shadow work, animal chaplaincy, and ancient healing technologies. Her study spans major religious and Indigenous traditions, with particular attention to medieval and Carmelite mystics. She has undertaken sustained cross-religious study of the Divine Feminine and brings this lineage into her work. In 2025, she completed a 12-day pilgrimage through France to sacred sites associated with Mary Magdalene and the Black Madonna, deepening her embodied engagement with these lineages. She also holds an affinity for the poetry of Rumi, Hadewijch of Antwerp, and Kabir. Keveney often says that energy was her first language, reflecting a lifelong sensitivity to subtle relational and embodied dynamics and the unseen world. In 2022, she completed 266 instructional hours and received her Global Mystics Certification through The Shift Network. She is currently enrolled in Education for Ministry (EfM), a four-year program grounded in theological reflection, at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas. She is also completing a certificate in Grief and Bereavement Studies through the University of Vermont.
Keveney was born and raised in central Pennsylvania and currently divides her time between Pennsylvania and Houston, Texas. She lives with her husband and their English Cream Golden Retriever, Princess Sophie.
